needing some help please !

[cookas]

G'day All, 

I am in need of some advice for why some songs are not showing up in the Album search section even though they are properly tagged and checked before importing them into the library. 

Firstly, I use Music Tag to tag all my mp3 files. I import the files into Music Tag, tag correctly with Album art, artist, album and title and so forth. I then take the files out of Music Tag, put them back in to double check they are still showing up all the info I have tagged them with. I do this before I update the Touch Jams. Majority of the time it works flawlessly and my Touch Jams library shows all the album cover art and subsequent info when opening up that specific album or artist. 

However, I have about 30 - 40 files, all properly tagged in Music Tag, that when I import into Touch Jams do not show in the main Album view.  I can search for them in the search section, but they do not show up in the main menu which is where I want to see them.  
In some cases I can see a duplicate album name with another artist so I make a minor change and then that album that didn't show initially comes up cos of the album name change. This has happened a few times. But in other cases the files that are properly tagged just fail to show in the main album view and I cannot figure out why. At all. And it's frustrating to say the least. 

Does anybody here know why this might be happening ??  For instance today I tried to add about 30 files, all 90's dance tracks ( don't judge me ! haha ) but not one single file showed up in the main view. So I took the files out and have left them out of my Touch Jams altogether for now. I have no idea why this is happening as I have almost 2000 files in there already that show up without issue.  And I am continously adding tagged files to the program to really beef up the touchscreen jukebox home experience. 

Also, another issue I have just discovered today is this.   Let's say I have 5 Pearl Jam songs from the Vitalogy album already in the library. Normally If i add another 2 or 3 songs from that same album, properly tagged, they will automatically fall under the Vitalogy album and not duplicate so that I don't have 2 Vitalogy album covers under Pearl Jam.  This goes for all the artists I have already imported in. Has worked all the time up until today. 

I added new files, with same album names, but instead of joining the already exisiting album, it duplicated. I tried to minor change a few things to get them to sync together but no luck. 

So today for instance I now have the Barenaked Ladies album "Stunt" showing up twice with 1 song in each album ?!?!    This has not happened before.  And it has already happened with a few other artists also.   Frustrating again. 

So please, can anyone please shed some light on what I am doing wrong here and help me to fix the issues I am having so that there are no duplicates and that all the files I import actually show in the main album view ?!!

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated from the Touch Jams community !!

Thanks in advance !


Cookie   ( Melbourne, Australia )     [e-mail] 

[tonyneen]

I would think it is your tagging that is NOT right.

From what i can gather from,

" I added new files, with same album names, but instead of joining the already exisiting album, it duplicated. I tried to minor change a few things to get them to sync together but no luck.
So today for instance I now have the Barenaked Ladies album "Stunt" showing up twice with 1 song in each album ?!?! This has not happened before. And it has already happened with a few other artists also. Frustrating again. "

I would think that there is something wrong with your ARTIST tag.

If you have DUPLICATE Albums with the EXACT same name , then it is the ARTIST tag.

Can you load all the TRACKS that are NOT Showing up in TouchJams into your tagging software and EXPORT the tag info, add it as an ATTACHMENT to your reply, so I can have a look at it.

I don't use "Music Tag" for my tagging, so i'm not familiar with the program.

Here is an example top40 mp3tag.html (239.15 KB)

[cookas]

Tony,

Thanks for your reply and apologies for the double post. I shall use the support thread from here on in.

As for this:

"Can you load all the TRACKS that are NOT Showing up in TouchJams into your tagging software and EXPORT the tag info, add it as an ATTACHMENT to your reply, so I can have a look at it"

I will give this a go but I aint as technically minded as majority of the people here no doubt ! I will check out Music Tag now and see what I can come up with.

Out of curiousity, which tagging program do you use ?? Music Tag is good cos the program can automatically get album info, art, song title etc etc from its 35 million + song database (or so they say !) without having to manually do each song.

As for what you asked for I shall try to get it done and back to you ASAP.

cheers mate......

[lzrfire]

Are you putting all your files into one folder?

[SoundBawx]

Tagging all your media can be a huge task. But, once it's done, it's done! And, it's a beautiful thing when it all looks as it should.

I use two different programs to solely take on the task of tagging my media. 1) MP3tag, 2) Tag&Rename. I'll search out my own album art on the web most times and drop it onto an album in MP3tag.

My experience tells me when tagging, if you have files that have really long file names or are in a lengthy amount of series of folders. You may run into issues when tagging. Try isolating problem albums/songs into a folder on your desktop and working on it there. Then, transferring it back into your collection once it's tagged properly, and tested. You may have to shorten the file names too if it contains too many characters/info. You can bump into this issue a lot with Various Artists/VA Albums. Especially if you have them sorted like i do with a bunch of tiers (genre/generation etc.)

Here's another tip. Grab a 2nd key for a laptop, or download the demo for this task on a 2nd machine or laptop. Drop a handful of problem albums that you've worked into TJ, to see if your tags have taken correctly. It will be super easy to update your data in TJ, and easy to view those problem albums to click around and make sure they look as they should. I would use the two programs noted above to follow up after your Music Tag does its thing to make sure the tags look correct. I've found that sometimes my tag won't take in MP3tag and i'll follow up with Tag&rename afterwards and it ALWAYS will take. As long as your filename isn't incredibly long, and the file isn't stuck in a deep tree of folders.

Hope that helps a bit.

[cookas]

awesome.... cheers for the responses guys. Over the past 2 days importing new tagged files seems to have worked flawlessly. The duplicate issue has gone, however I have not tried putting in the other files that wouldn't show just yet. I keep on updating it with new files I have not done yet, but I will get to that very shortly.

Yes I do have all of my tagged files in one folder. I merely tag them in Music Tag, double check they are all tagged correctly, drop them in my "TAGGED" folder and then update the TJ library. This method has had minimal issues thus far as I add more and more to the library.

I have a folder labeled "NOT WORKING" after being tagged in Music Tag correctly but still won't show in the TJ library. I will soon try these 30 or 40 so files again. They don't have large file names at all, just the standard title and artist and then I add more in Music Tag as required.

Some files won't initially tag correctly in Music Tag, but always on a 2nd attempt and then they go straight into the TJ library and there they appear !

Thanks for the reply and i shall update soon with how i went with the files that haven't worked correctly yet.

[tonyneen]

Each ALBUM should be in a SEPARATE folder.

The folder layout above each ALBUM folder does not really matter.

[cookas]

yeh cheers Tony.... every file I put in the library now has it's own folder, obviously grouped together in albums. I have a tonne of single mp3 files I've downloaded over the years so I am now grouping them altogether and creating new folders for each album.

There are still some tracks that just fail to appear in the Library as I mentioned the other day. I have put them back in music tag and retagged them, tweaked an albun name or so, but still they just don't wanna show in the main library. For now I am just gonna leave them out completely.

[tonyneen]

If you want to zip up the tracks that you are having problems with and upload them to a file hosting site, i will download them, fix them and re upload them for you ??

And NO, i don't want too steal your music lol

[lzrfire]

Perhaps you could upload a screenshot.  In this example, using mp3 tag, I have all misc. artists starting with the letter A which I do not have albums for in a Folder simply named Starting with A.  As tagged this "album" will show up in Touch Jams under the album tab in V for Various artists.  I have made custom album art for that A Folder.  I do the same for artists starting with B-Z.  Artists that I do have albums for such as Paul McCartney - Pure McCartney are tagged with the album name and the artists name.  Another example attached.  Hope this helps.         

[tonyneen]

lzrfire

Your comment,

"Artists that I do have albums for such as Paul McCartney - Pure McCartney are tagged "

Looking at the second screen shot. The Album "Pure McCartney" would come under "V" as Various Artists.

The Album contains different Artists, ie, Paul McCartney , Paul McCartney & Linda McCartney, Paul McCartney And Wings, Wings, Paul McCartney And Michael Jackson ect.

What i would do in a situation like that is change the ARTIST to Paul McCartney and add the other ARTIST to the TITLE as a Featured Artist, for example The Back Seat Of My Car (Feat. Linda McCartney).

This would move the ALBUM to "P" with all other Paul McCartney ALBUMS that you may have.

Also, the reason i asked for cookas to upload his problematic tracks was, He said he was not all that technically minded, there is obviously something wrong that he can't see, so i did not want to overload him with suggestions.

If you load ALL the tracks in an ALBUM folder into your Tagging software, then select all tracks, it is easier to see if there is a problem with ALBUM & ARTIST tags.

As your tagging software will give you multiple options per tag, I use MP3TAG and it works 100% everytime

It is very easy to miss a , . ' ´ ¨" missing or extra in a tag just by looking at tracks one at a time.

Hope it makes sense !!

[lzrfire]

Hi tonyneen,

I get what your saying. However, in my experience, as long as the album artist is listed as just Paul McCartney on all the songs it will appear under "P" in TouchJams. You do so much for these forums. I wasn't trying to step on toes.
Just putting in my two cents. Take care..

[tonyneen]

lzrfire

No offence taken

You are probably right on that one as I never use the ALBUM ARTIST tag, except for Customized compilation albums that i create for the UK Top 40.

This also allows me to use individual album art for each track.

I use this ALBUM ARTIST name layout (40 Top Singles UK 2XXX), so it keeps all the Top 40 albums on the first home page in TouchJams.

This was done on a commercial jukebox in a pub, so customers could see the latest tracks without having to scroll or search full of alcohol, I learned to keep it simple/idiot proof.

In their face so to say, made us a few £££££££££££££££'s

EDIT. It's all coming back to me now, there was a reason i don't use the ALBUM ARTIST tag, 3 or 4 years ago, a bug/glitch/quirk crept into Touchjams that messed up how some of my albums were displayed, so i just removed all the ALBUM ARTIST tags to sort it out and never used them since, apart for my Top 40 Albums.

[mattdehat]

Hi i have 10s of thousands of songs from over the years on a 3tb hdd. I suppose doing all of these is going to be a massive mission on its own,including sunfly from cd1 to about 380 cds later and every compilation they made.is there any upto date ways of automatically doing these .thanks I do realize it would take days

[TouchJams Support]

You could try SongKong, it does have this type of automation. I strongly advise learning that program before you start manipulating tons of files. And, you'd want to test it on small amounts of files so you can see what's going on.